


Interlude: I AM LOSING GROUND

by roughmagic



Series: A SINCERE EFFORT [5]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Break Up, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Hospitalization, Indelible Mustard Stains On The Soul, Medical Trauma, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 00:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18377456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roughmagic/pseuds/roughmagic
Summary: “I never meant… in the mess hall, I mean, I didn’t—I wasn’t in full… It wasn’t my intent to… Hurt you. Sir.”(Interlude post-BASIC INSECURITY.)





	Interlude: I AM LOSING GROUND

**Author's Note:**

> This was original a small fic prompt (one character wiping away another's tears, kaz and moth) I got from an anon on tumblr, so... probably a year or more later? Here it is, and almost certainly not what either of us thought it would be? Yikes...
> 
> Also, as ever, big ups to @witchoil for encouraging me to swing for the fences.

 

 

**THE BONES WILL NOT GROW TOGETHER AGAIN**

**AND THE PERSONALITY WILL NOT COME BACK**

 

 

 

You almost never have trouble with naming songs on the radio, especially when the Diamond Dog’s library is finite. And you know you’ve heard what’s on when Sunny Kitten comes to take your vitals, but you sit there with the thermometer digging into the floor of your mouth and wonder if she’ll mark it on your chart if you ask her what it is.

Probably. Ocelot’s probably got the room bugged anyway, even if she didn’t make a note of _Expressed confusion_ or _Memory impairment_ , he’d find out, and he’d know you’d been busted up in a new way if you couldn’t put a name to a guitar. It doesn’t bother you too much—the upside of all the painkillers is that you don’t care about anything. Well, you do, but it’s more theoretical. There are always stepping stones available to plant your feet on to carry you away from worrying. Metaphorically.

“Any pain?” Sunny Kitten pecks the thermometer out of your mouth with gloved hands. She’s worried about another lapse into sepsis, which worries you too when you’re not pleasantly sunk down into the mattress. There had been an operation this morning or last night that you just now remember. Related to that?

“No, ma’am.” Today has been pretty good. You’ll fall back asleep any minute now. Moth’s greatest hit. 

“Hmm.” She gives you sort of a sly smile over her clipboard. “Sucking up today, huh?" 

“I saw Civ… Civet here yesterday,” You don’t let yourself labor over their name too long. It’s not a brain injury speech thing that you know of, you’re just still dozy and run out of breath constantly. “I know they’re a pain.” 

“You’re right. They are.” Kitten rolls her eyes and peels back the layers of blankets and sheets covering you to look at your leg. You’ve got a sock on that you don’t remember, but you can wiggle your toes underneath. Just a little wave. Kitten tucks you back in and is pulling out a blood pressure cuff when someone taps on the doorway, no, _Kaz_ taps on the doorway. 

Sunny Kitten straightens up. “Commander?”

“I’d like a minute with Brass Moth. I won’t be,” Kaz does the thing where he stops, recollects and tries again with a smile. You’ve always thought it was cute, a fresh start in the middle of a statement. “It should only take a moment.”

“Of course, sir. I’ll be outside.” She salutes and then does a strange thing with her white doctor’s coat, pulls it like she wants to resettle it on her shoulders but all it does is draw your wandering attention to her holster. Right. Just in case you suddenly regain all your strength and go berserk again.

But she still closes the door halfway for a little privacy, which is nice. You know Kaz is a private person when it comes to you. You’re better at being private when you can stop yourself from smiling, which you can’t, right now. Your face feels stiff and your lower lip hurts like it might have split from dryness, but it’s just so good to see him. It’s so good.

You’ve got a huge IV in one arm that you don’t want to bend and none of your muscles really want to cooperate, but you should still be able to shift over, make some space for him like you had last time. Kaz gestures you down with a little noise and for a moment you can feel the smile on your face like it’s pinched meat instead of your own body.

But he drags up the same chair Civet sits in when they visit. He looks so good. He looks better than the last time you saw him, when it was red. Be specific. When it was in Room 101. Shirtsleeves and strung out. Now he smells like soap and coffee and he just looks so wrapped up, so official and put together and real. You want to sign some papers or charge into battle for him. Anything.

It’s your stiff IV arm that’s closest to him, but with a little concentration you can make the fingers pull the palm towards him like a sea creature. He knows you so well, he’ll know you could really use someone to hold onto right now. “We’ve got to stop… meeting like this.”

Kaz’s body relaxes, but he holds onto his crutch between you like a flag planted on foreign soil. “No kidding. You’ve probably clocked more hours on the Medical platform than Canary at this point.”

Laughing is too sharp and reflexive of a movement for you right now, but you can smile and hum a little noise. It’s late afternoon and the light is almost orange, makes the whole room glow warmly. He looks golden and beautiful but you’re having a hard time reading his face.

“Moth, I want—” Kaz stops and twists the radio volume down with a snap. You hadn’t noticed it was still going, admittedly a bit lost in the sun on his shades. “Can you hear me? I know you had surgery this morning, so if you can’t understand me, I need you to tell me now. I can come back later.” 

“Oh, no, I’m good, sir,” You try to sit up a little more, but it’s mostly a gesture rather than a real attempt. Your body isn’t going anywhere under your own power. But you aren’t too dreamy, you can sober up and concentrate on him. It’s a swimming focus, but you can do anything he asks, you always could. “I… want to talk to you, too.”

He’s silent for a long moment, and you don’t know what he’s thinking. “What about?”

“I never meant… in the mess hall, I mean, I didn’t—” You shouldn’t have started out all smiley and slow. You should’ve started out respectful, apologized before just assuming things were alright. “I wasn’t in full…” Control? Possession of faculties? “It wasn’t my intent to…” Embarrass? “Hurt you. Sir.”

It’s been so long since that transgression that it almost seems in bad taste to bring it up again, after Civet, after the whole thing with the Boss and Snake, but you’ve never stopped wanting to apologize for it. You’d never gotten the chance until now, and you know that if you can just explain things clearly, you’ll both understand. Both feel better.

You can feel his gaze leaving you like the sun passing behind a cloud. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Moth. I don’t want you to blame yourself for that.”

Relief floods through you, and you sag back against the wedge of pillows keeping you barely upright. He knows, he knows you couldn’t have stopped yourself, that you couldn’t have disobeyed despite wanting with every part of you to stop.

“I apologize.” He takes a deep breath. 

“I was blinded by things I should’ve put out of my heart years ago. I failed you, as a superior officer, and as a,” He’s saying a speech to you. “Confidante.”

“I want to renew my commitment to you as your XO. It’s time for me to remember my responsibilities to you, and stop putting you in a position where personal feelings become an exploitable disadvantage for you.” His glove creaks on the crutch, leather twisting. “Do you understand, Brass Moth?”

You don’t, but it sits on you like snowfall. Only structured by how it lays on the surface of what’s buried. You flop your hand over to be palm up, gaze unable to go much farther past the red knot of his tie. His jaw, the shape that you know in the dark with your hands, the texture with your lips. “Kaz?”

“It’ll be ‘Commander’ again, now.”

You feel yourself lying there, head wobbling around on your neck. Your tongue in your mouth just stays there, entombed in teeth. You can fix this, you could fix this if you could hold onto a thought for longer, if you could reach out to touch him. 

“Sir,” you say, throat aching. “ _Sir_.”

“Whatever I can do to make this easier,” Kaz says, hoarsely. He leans in a little, crutch braced against his shoulder like he’s using it to hold himself up. “I will. You still want that transfer? It’s yours. Any post you can dream of.” 

“No,” you croak. Civet is here. You can’t transfer to another base. You need Civet to be here now, but they aren’t. You bend both your arms to push yourself upright, burning with the need to move. To get away. Blood pushes back up into your IV and it’s painful when it all rushes back in. The frantic background noise of your heart monitor is giving you away.

“ _Please_ , Moth.”

“It’s fine, Commander,” you hear it sort of barreling out of you, the desperate voice before dry heaves. “I un—understand. I’m sorry. I’m really— I understand, sir.” He isn’t going to get out of here until you call him that, until you prove you understand. You do. You understand.

The threads catch and Ocelot’s screws tighten you up until all the angles are flush and there’s something approximating composure. You can even smile, with just the right amount of forlornness and regret. “I’m sorry, sir. Thanks— thank you for telling me up front.”

It feels like he might be really looking at you for the first time since he came through the door, but you can’t look back at him to tell for sure. “You’re crying.”

Your arm doesn’t want to move at the elbow but you bend it anyway, touching fingertips to your face. Weatherman’s report checks out. 

“Commander Miller?” Your chin jerks up a little at Sunny Kitten peeking back in. “Not to rush you, but—Moth?” 

“IV hurts,” you gulp, and Kaz’s chair honks on the floor as he stands up suddenly. Kitten edges past him like he isn’t there and sloppy tears keep you from seeing him leave. He does, though, he’s gone when you look up, and every day you wake up in the same bed he never comes back.

“You blew that vein right out.” Kitten sighs, twisting your arm this way and that. She sits down on the edge of your bed. “Didn’t I tell you not to bend it?”

“Don’t cry, it can’t hurt that bad.” Her thumb in the rubber glove drags uncomfortably at the skin on your face, smearing the coolness of evaporating tears all over your cheek. “We’ll put some ice on it. Good as new.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually going to be plot relevant to the next fic, which, is actually happening, after a lot of tire kicking and rust scraping and self examination. It's time to get 🅱️ack on the bullshit


End file.
